Schlink Attack: On being a nurse...

Sunday, May 19, 2024

On being a nurse...

Earlier this week, I spoke to a group of high school students about my career in nursing. For a couple of weeks prior, I scrolled through tens of thousands of photos looking for apt snapshots of time spent in the various hospitals, operating rooms, and clinics throughout my career. The agony of sifting through hours of unlabeled Shutterfly and Google Photo albums inspired me to either reorganize them or hit delete altogether. Luckily, I did neither. Some messes I need to just walk away from, even digital ones.

While preparing for the presentation, I enjoyed seeing old faces and remembering the kinds of medical care I provided. For example, I had forgotten that sometimes we'd deep freeze skull flaps for patients whose brains weren't quite ready to be re-covered. I'd forgotten how big a rigid cystoscope could be, which is a camera with a metal sheath used to look inside the bladder. All over again, I can smell the Trix cereal sweetness of the 3 liter sorbitol bags used to irrigate during prostate surgery, feel slickness of the floor when the plastic surgeon finished a liposuction case, or hear an organ donor's heart beating to silence. My nursing career started in the O.R. and while I moved onto different specialties, pieces of my heart still remain.

I had the time of my life working in urology too, but the fun was different. My job required lot of time educating, teaching, and finding appropriate resources for my patients, which meant I had to be at the ready, confident, and calm - every single day. Need to learn how to catheterize yourself because your bladder no longer works? What about giving yourself penile injections to treat erectile dysfunction? Maybe there's a cancer treatment to walk through, or you need a refill on your antibiotics because it's your 10th urinary tract infection this year. Urologic disorders are undiscerning to those with money and status, and those without. Because I lived in DC, I saw so many patients literally from all over the world. Some worked in government, others worked in the streets. Some were actual royalty while others were actual royal pains in the ass. I could recognize phone numbers calling in and knew exactly why they were calling. The urology clinic taught me to have massive patience and how to execute a professional poker face that was also empathetic, warm, and reassuring.

Since we are getting ready to leave Uzbekistan in a few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about the events that will stick with me after four years. The spring 2021 covid vaccine rollout was notable feat. I still get goosebumps thinking about the logistical hurdles, blocks, and creative pathways we took to make it a wild success. Two colleagues and I executed an embassy wide earthquake drill that was equal parts stressful, hilarious, meaningful, and laden with lessons learned. Over 400 people were involved in the scenario including 20+ casualties with varying injuries (actors), dozens of panicked citizens (also actors) showing up to the consulate doors with their personalized "help me I'm an American" stories, the assault of hysterical colleagues, securing the premises and damage control, while maintaining the facade of calm, thoughtful responses and decision making.

I got to visit hospitals and clinics in different regions of the country, creating medical resources for Americans living or touring in Uzbekistan. I worked with the school and other embassies on emergency planning, hosting multi-language trainings on CPR and multi-casualty management. I supported a nod worthy amount of medical evacuations. Because, sometimes lesions need a biopsy, appendixes get infected, kidney stones need removing, and someone with uncontrolled bleeding out needs a higher level of care. My boss and I like to joke that all bleeding eventually stops, but we're also not wrong. Living in a place that is medically austere means we have to be vigilant for our people, because it could be a matter of life or death. And at the same time manage the routine tasks like dispensing blood pressure meds, providing immunizations, drawing labs, performing well checks, or handling diarrhea woes.

In the end, I don't know how much I inspired the students to go into medicine with my stories, but it was fun teaching them how to inject oranges with needles or pack wounds with gauze. Some were enthusiastic while others were anxious to get the session over with. Regardless how they might have felt, I appreciated the opportunity to think about my history with nursing, my mistakes, and victories. Now, I have so much more to look forward to at our next post in Astana and continuing my work in that health unit.